Thank you William. Thank you for all the wonderful gifts you left behind but especially, and under these circumstances, thank you for the cockroach in a meeting of fowls. Love, Jealousy, betrayal and racism. Strong words, yet existent and experienced by individuals and societies alike. So weak are we human that we succumb to the weaknesses of our hearts and often ignore the voice of reason. As it was in the past, so it is in the present. Be so it in the future? Is it bravery if one tries to defy one’s destiny by taking it in his/her hands and bending it into the subjectively right direction?
Circumstances define whom we are at given moments. Today I am the Moorish general. Will I be his ensign tomorrow? I pray not that I be his wife some day. For a while now, I have been stuck with being the victim because of my skin colour and cultural heritage. I feel betrayed, I feel jealousy, I feel racial prejudice. I have betrayed, I have been jealous and can freely admit to that because I am human. Have I been racist against a person, a people, a culture? I hope not.
So, let me introduce myself. My name is Othello, not to be confounded with William’s guy. Apart from being namesakes, the other thing we both have in common is that he was a victim of the same injustices that plague my world today. So, if I am a modern day Othello, who is the villain willing and able to smile in my face and stab me in the back? Well, the answer is simple and straightforward. My Iago is the society I live in. A society I am supposed to trust and rely on. A society that does not fail to remind me every now and then that I do not belong.
The chief of the Police claims that history will teach us nothing. I claim that knowing yesterday will help us understand today and prepare us to change tomorrow. Anybody who takes time to stop and look at the past will sooner than later understand why I am Othello today and how I can be myself without worrying that the other guy sees nothing in me but a skin colour.
Let us throw in a few big words and phrases like ethnocentrism, hegemony, the pseudo-scientific belief that one is superior to all other races. Let us remember how one race conquered the seas to bring civilization to the lesser races, disregarding the cultures, religions and social structures of the people involved. That is when the mess that is our world today was created. The reason why some people grow up thinking others are better than them simply because they are more or less pigmented than their fellow men.
The timeline of our history highlights how these false ideologies affected and still affect relations between humans. From slavery, through colonialism and neo-colonialism to domination through (lack of) control of global politics, finance and economies, it has been a one peoples’ show.
Today, the consequences of our past have gotten entangled with all the consequences of globalisation and the information age. The drifting of population from south to north has given birth to societies where some people tend to be looked upon and treated in their daily life as inferior. They get the jobs no one else would do, get certain comments thrown their way from time to time, get intimidated and mishandled by the authorities sometimes and most often than not, they get refused their basic human rights to walk into a night club and dance.
My name is Othello, I live in Bonn, Germany and I just want to dance!!!! May I?
